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| Front page, baby! |
The Mizfitz have more than doubled since the first practice I went to in June, and we're still growing (we don't even have a ref squad yet! Just one ref!) I got one of my friends from high school to join and she loved her first practice, and all of us girls are getting closer and bonding and learning how to work together and scrimmage. It's funny, I've only known some of these girls for a month, maybe just a little more, and I feel more at home with them than some of the people I've worked with for a few years now. And that's no strike against my colleagues - it's just that you need that kind of chemistry for team sports.
Tonight we went through the WFTDA minimum skills list - not exactly being tested, but our coach was checking us off as we did them - and I was so pleased that I got better at the things that I passed the first time (with bootcamp), and I passed the things that I failed before (like crossovers!!!!!!) It confirms for me my suspicions at the end of bootcamp, which were that it's not that I CAN'T do this stuff, it's just that I need more time to work on it. I'm glad I got my "more time" with the Mizfitz, because I feel like I'm doing so much better, building upon and practicing the things I learned before. And we scrimmage! Well, sort of. We don't really have refs, and we're all still learning the rules, so it's not a real scrimmage exactly. But it's nice to put the skills we learned into practice, in a "real-life" situation as opposed to skating in a pace line or whatnot. We're learning how to recall these skills in a less-controlled situation.
It's going to be really hard for me once school starts to continue derby. And if there's any chance the team might relocate to Gilroy or Hollister, it will be damn near impossible. But for now, I will hang on and make it work, because this is something that I am in love with, and you just can't let that kind of love go :) And I'm so very lucky to have people in my life who are so understanding about all of this, about how much I love derby: Jimmy, his mom, my parents. Without them, I could NOT do this.
This isn't just a little hobby, a mere distraction from the mundane life I normally lead. It's a part of me that I didn't know existed, that I had to dig deep to find, and now that it's been discovered, I don't think I could bury it and put it back where it came from. I tried to live without derby for a few months, and I was SO unhappy. Skating with the Mizfitz has been rewarding and challenging and empowering and really just life-saving. I'm glad that I heard about them when I did, because it really brought fire back into my life.